For more than twenty-five years, After the Fact has provided a time-tested, innovative approach to guiding students through American history and the methods used to study it. In dramatic episodes that move chronologically through American history, this best-selling book examines a broad variety of topics like oral evidence, photographs, ecological data, films and television programs, church and town records, census data, and novels. Whether for the introductory survey or for a historical methods course, After the Fact is the ideal text for any instructor who wants to introduce his or her students to what it is that historians actually do when studying American history.

New to This Edition

A new final chapter investigates the puzzle of body image and gender in contemporary society: why are people today so overweight yet so obsessed with thin women and fit men?

A new chapter examines quilting in the 1840s and 1850s as an aspect of material culture.

Primary Source Investigator, a CD for students, features mini-documentaries and hundreds of primary sources such as documents, images, maps, and charts. PSI offers the opportunity to investigate and work with the sources, take notes on them, then craft a paper or presentation. PSI is packaged free with each new copy of After the Fact. Three chapters from past editions of After the Fact are included on the CD: "The 'Noble Savage' and the Artist's Canvas," "Huey Generis," and "Instant Watergate."

New questions at the end of each chapter help students take full advantage of the Primary Source Investigator CD.

The use of a second color livens up the design of the text.

Prologue: The Strange Death of Silas Deane: The Problem of Selecting Evidence

1. Serving Time in Virginia: The Perspectives of Evidence in Social History

2. The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Salem: Studying Crisis at the Community Level

3. Declaring Independence: The Strategies of Documentary Analysis

4. Jackson's Frontier, and Turner's: History and Grand Theory

5. The Invisible Pioneers: Ecological Transformations along the Western Frontier

6. Quilting in the 1840s and 1850s: Exploring Material Culture

7. The Madness of John Brown: The Uses of Psychohistory

8. The View from the Bottom Rail: Oral History and the Freedpeople

9. The Mirror with a Memory: Photographic Evidence and the Urban Scene

10. USDA Government Inspected: The Jungle of Political History

11. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Case of History versus Law

12. Dust Bowl Odyssey: The Collective History of a Migration

13. The Decision to Drop the Bomb: The Uses of Models in History

14. From Rosie to Lucy: The Mass Media and Images of Women in the 1950s

15. Breaking into Watergate: Plumbing a Presidency through Audio Tapes

For more than twenty-five years, After the Fact has provided a time-tested, innovative approach to guiding students through American history and the methods used to study it. In dramatic episodes that move chronologically through American history, this best-selling book examines a broad variety of topics like oral evidence, photographs, ecological data, films and television programs, church and town records, census data, and novels. Whether for the introductory survey or for a historical methods course, After the Fact is the ideal text for any instructor who wants to introduce his or her students to what it is that historians actually do when studying American history.

New to This Edition

A new final chapter investigates the puzzle of body image and gender in contemporary society: why are people today so overweight yet so obsessed with thin women and fit men?

A new chapter examines quilting in the 1840s and 1850s as an aspect of material culture.

Primary Source Investigator, a CD for students, features mini-documentaries and hundreds of primary sources such as documents, images, maps, and charts. PSI offers the opportunity to investigate and work with the sources, take notes on them, then craft a paper or presentation. PSI is packaged free with each new copy of After the Fact. Three chapters from past editions of After the Fact are included on the CD: "The 'Noble Savage' and the Artist's Canvas," "Huey Generis," and "Instant Watergate."

New questions at the end of each chapter help students take full advantage of the Primary Source Investigator CD.

The use of a second color livens up the design of the text.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Strange Death of Silas Deane: The Problem of Selecting Evidence

1. Serving Time in Virginia: The Perspectives of Evidence in Social History

2. The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Salem: Studying Crisis at the Community Level

3. Declaring Independence: The Strategies of Documentary Analysis

4. Jackson's Frontier, and Turner's: History and Grand Theory

5. The Invisible Pioneers: Ecological Transformations along the Western Frontier

6. Quilting in the 1840s and 1850s: Exploring Material Culture

7. The Madness of John Brown: The Uses of Psychohistory

8. The View from the Bottom Rail: Oral History and the Freedpeople

9. The Mirror with a Memory: Photographic Evidence and the Urban Scene

10. USDA Government Inspected: The Jungle of Political History

11. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Case of History versus Law

12. Dust Bowl Odyssey: The Collective History of a Migration

13. The Decision to Drop the Bomb: The Uses of Models in History

14. From Rosie to Lucy: The Mass Media and Images of Women in the 1950s

15. Breaking into Watergate: Plumbing a Presidency through Audio Tapes